It’s not often that big media outlets like Netflix manage to create a realistic TV show about what it’s like to be a young person in the modern world. Think 13 Reasons Why and think about how awful a portrayal of suicide and young people it gave to its millions of viewers. However, the latest series on the block, Sex Education, captured life as a teenager in Britain in 2019 perfectly.

Sex Education is a comedy drama about young people in Sixth Form and the trials and tribulations they face, oftentimes about sex. The show explores sex in depth with main characters Otis and Maeve setting up their own sex therapy clinic in school to make money. These two characters are complex and likeable individuals with totally different backgrounds and status in school, yet their friendship just seems to work.

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Maeve’s story in particular is one that tugs at the heartstrings. She is complicated, troubled and has to go through an abortion in the storyline. She is bullied and doesn’t fit in, much like Otis and his best friend Eric, who is one of a few black pupils at the school, gay and enjoys dressing flamboyantly each day, sometimes as a woman. What Sex Education does is fantastic here – it gives the stories to the misfits. The whole show belongs to them and nobody else.

Perhaps what Sex Education does best is reflect what it’s really like being at school: difficult. There are bullies, there are people who just don’t fit in, there are abortions, there are openly gay people and closeted ones. There are nudes that get leaked and there are lives that are potentially destroyed, as well as people with all kinds of parents – some who are overbearing and some who are totally absent.

The show is a credit to Netflix and indeed television itself. Writer and creator Laurie Nunn has a lot to be thanked and praised for, not to mention a lot of awards to win. Any parent who wants to know how it is to go to school nowadays, and who wants their children to feel like they aren’t alone: watch Sex Education. It is fantastic.